


Memories Are Made of This

by ej3467273



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Not really though, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 14:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ej3467273/pseuds/ej3467273
Summary: “Love’s a responsibility. It’s a commitment to give oneself to another fully, a power that is so great it can overcome anything. But it has the ability to destroy someone, which is why we must be responsible with it. For with great power comes great responsibility. Love comes with sacrifices but in the end, it’s the most worthwhile feeling God ever gave mankind.”Or when Peter proposes to Michelle (eventually).





	Memories Are Made of This

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Imagine Me and You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2227386) by [maydayparade8123 (orphan_account)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/maydayparade8123). 



Peter Parker has taken on many enemies in his lifetime. The Vulture, Scorpion, his former mentor Dr. Otto Octavius, the Green Goblin -God he had a regular rogue’s gallery of super villains didn’t he?- not to mention Thanos. He’s broken his arm more times than he can count, been thrown from buildings, trains, cars, and been blasted by alien weaponry that would kill a regular human in a matter of seconds.  He’s had buildings dropped on him, airport terminals, you name it. 

All of that paled in comparison to what he was going to try and do. Thanos himself would probably retreat from the Earth and mutter ‘good luck’ to him, while tossing him his Infinity Gauntlet for extra protection. 

He’s gonna propose to Michelle Jones, his girlfriend of seven years.

What would drive Peter Parker, whose head was usually screwed on straight, a scientific genius and soon to be chemistry teacher at his old high school at Midtown, to do such an audacious thing? Why would he put himself in such a situation that is easily avoidable? 

He blames his Aunt May. The idea of marriage (a societal mechanism designed to entrap women in order to make them dependable on their husbands as described by Michelle) had never crossed his mind until he’s visiting May one fall day, coming over like he always does after work.  

His aunt is getting older; her movements are slower, her joints aching more. She’s still young-looking and still gets free food from waiters at Thai restaurants who don’t know that she’s still mourning the memory of Ben. But her mind is as sharp as ever and as they’re talking about their days, Peter’s eyes flashes to the ring on her finger. The ring that Uncle Ben had proposed with and she had on her right ring finger for the past ten years. 

Suddenly his mind goes back to the time his uncle had told him how he proposed to May. He had been ten at the time and had been nursing a crush on a girl named Gwen Stacy. He had asked Ben about love because he had heard the girls playing a game about who they loved. Gwen ‘loved’ Harry. So there was that. 

“ _ Love Peter? You know, your father would say that love is just a body reaction or something about chemicals and whatever. Yet he loved you and your mother. He loved me and your aunt. The moment I saw your aunt, I knew that I loved her. Wasn’t just some chemical reaction, it was a feeling I had inside of me. Loved her laugh, her eyes that twinkled in the moonlight in the park, how she would always know what to say to me when I was having a bad day.” _

_ “Love’s a responsibility. It’s a commitment to give oneself to another fully, a power that is so great it can overcome anything. But it has the ability to destroy someone, which is why we must be responsible with it. For with great power comes great responsibility. Love comes with sacrifices but in the end, it’s the most worthwhile feeling God ever gave mankind.” _

“What are you thinking about Peter?” Aunt May had asked, noticing he wasn’t eating the chow mein he usually blitzed through. He was poking at it with the tip of his fork, just looking. “Is something wrong? Are things good between you and MJ?”

“Things between me and MJ are great,” Peter said. They always were, even when it seemed like they were getting into another argument (mostly because MJ loved to argue for argument’s sake) and he  _ loved  _ her. “Just thinking about Ben right now.”

“I miss Ben every day,” May confesses. “It’s hard to think that he’s been gone for almost a decade now.”

“Yeah,” Peter says noncommittally. Then he changes the subject slightly because he can see the sorrow deepening in May’s eyes. And his question is what brought him to the path that he’s currently on. “How did Ben propose to you?”

There’s a shift in May’s posture. She was slightly slumping, but then she shoots up straight, like a rocket. Her eyes change as well. It goes from welling with sadness to sudden joy.  _ Man women change fast.  _ He then erases that thought from his mind. 

MJ would kill him for thinking that. 

“Well...it was...almost thirty-five years ago. Memory is a little rusty,” she jokes. “We were going to see the Statue of Liberty. Oh, Ben loved that statue so much I thought he was going to marry it instead of me. We went to the top of the statue, as we always did, to gaze onto the river. With the sun shining in my eyes, suddenly a brighter light was next to me.”

May smiled, her memories of that day flooding back. Peter hadn’t seen her smile like that in years. 

“He asked me to marry him. We were both young, no doubt about that. But we were stable, in love, and he was the most handsome man who ever walked the planet,” she said dreamingly. “I said yes. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Why did you want to know?

Peter is silent for a while. He wanted to mutter ‘just asking’ like he always did when confronted by the why, but he looks down at his food. He can imagine MJ walking down the aisle in a white dress, her sisters following behind (or her brothers, cause there’s no set rule on who carries the wedding train) and he’s standing there at the altar with the priest or whoever the state was gracious enough to send to marry them. 

He wants to spend the rest of his life with her. To have her call him an idiot, but she has his last name (or hyphenated, or just be married with her own last name, because of the modern woman) and they’re together. There’s something about marriage that just makes it all the more special, and he just doesn’t know  _ why.  _ Blame society, blame sexist double standards, there’s just something awesome about waking up and thinking,  _ holy shit this is my wife.  _

“I wanna marry MJ.” 

And it’s out there. He braces for May’s reaction. 

“You want to marry Michelle?” May repeats and Peter nods. He doesn’t want to talk about it for some reason as if it will alert MJ right then and there to his devious plans to tie the knot. “It’s about time.”

He almost spits out the mouthful of drunken noodles he’s stuffing into his mouth.  _ It’s about time?  _ He’s twenty-four, barely out of college, and she says it’s about time? 

“Whatta ya mean it’s about time?” he squints his eyes at May, who responds with a short laugh. “Have I been that obvious?”

“Peter, you’re the smartest person in Queens. But even a blind man can tell that you want to marry Michelle. Everyone can see it. Except for Michelle.”

XXX

Peter’s secret life as Spider-Man is discovered by MJ just six months after Homecoming. He’s swinging around New York at night (in defiance of his aunt’s wishes) when he spots her on a rooftop, reading beneath a small portable lamp. He knows that rooftop because that’s the roof of the building where  _ he  _ lives.

He lands on there and she doesn’t even bother to acknowledge his presence. Turning on his voice filtration -hey, it wasn’t his fault Mr. Stark never told him about it-and he addresses her.

“Hello there citizen!” he says in his most Captain America-esque accent that he can muster. “What are you doing on this rooftop late at night?”

“Cut the crap Peter and get out of my moonlight,” she muttered, turning a page in a well-worn book. He later sees that it’s Mary Shelley’s  _ Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus,  _ a book that had been assigned to them in their English class. He knows she’s read it before, he’s seen it in her hands during freshman year. 

(He’s observant, not obsessive okay? So what if he notices that she has dimples, her eyes sparkle in the moonlight, and her hair, while frizzy and a mess of tangles, is better than any hair he had ever seen on anybody else. He’s also very objective. Or so he tells himself.)

“Who’s Peter?” he asks, trying to keep up the gimmick. “Must be a good guy, this Peter. Wonder if he likes  _ Star Wars  _ or stole Captain America’s shield before.”

Okay, he immediately outed himself. He takes off his mask and doesn’t even bother to hide his identity to her.

“How’d you know?” he questioned and she shrugs her shoulders, a very Michelle-esque gesture.

“Despite us being in a school for nerds, only I can tell that you’re Spider-Man, but apparently everybody is as blind as Helen Keller.”

XXX

He’s armed with the ring. After much soul-searching (Are you sure it should cost this much? he had asked his Aunt May, who just shoved a check from Tony Stark into his hands) and comparing diamonds and others, he finally had a perfect engagement ring for her. It just screams MJ; it’s not elegant, but it’s beautiful in its simplicity, much like the girl he wants to marry and spend the rest of his life with. 

But how to propose? He can go the old-fashioned route; a candlelit dinner, a bottle of wine, and popping the question. It’s a classic, Flash owes him a favor, and what could go wrong?

(He immediately shoots down the idea. MJ hates cliches and Flash owes him  _ one,  _ emphasis on the one, favor from bailing him out in high school for a project. He’s holding that favor close to his chest for something else.)

So he decides to do something else. There’s an old drive-in movie theater a couple of miles outside of the city where barely anybody goes. Peter is sure that he and MJ basically keep the old man’s business alive single-handedly, so when he asks to have the place to himself one night, the guy doesn’t question it and tosses him the key.

“Make sure everything’s locked up when you’re done, don’t break anything, and don’t eat all the concessions. Gotta make money somehow.”

Peter doesn’t even know the old man’s name. (Stanley? He thinks to himself the afternoon before his big plan.)

So there they are, sprawled out on the hood of MJ’s rickety old car, the same one she has been driving since the dinosaurs became extinct, a blanket over their legs and stomachs, munching on popcorn. She’s a good movie buddy; doesn’t ask too many questions, reacts at the appropriate times, and only comments after the movie is over. 

They’re watching one of her favorite movies;  _ Alien.  _ MJ’s a horror film fan -surprise, surprise- and she holds  _ Alien  _ in a special place in her heart. It’s one of the first movies with a strong female lead, it’s suspenseful, practical, and it scares the shit out both of them despite them watching it for the thousandth time.

“So how was work?” Peter asks and MJ raises an eyebrow. He  _ never  _ talks during movies, only to shoo somebody or yell out a warning before he launches a slipper at Ned for talking too much, and only moves to get snacks or a drink.

(On a side note, Ned’s in Los Angeles working with Betty Brant on a short documentary about whales or something like that. Dude’s been pining after Betty since high school, but Peter’s pretty sure he’s gonna finally ask her out.)

“It was fine,” MJ said simply. She was one of the workers who didn’t cause too much trouble in the workplace despite her being, well  _ MJ.  _ She’s an investigative reporter for  _ The Wall Street Journal  _ and her last article landed the Kingpin in some serious hot water. He’s proud of her for that, considering he had been battling that egomaniac for almost two years now. “Jameson yelled about you for about an hour and almost assigned me to your butt. Again.”

Peter inwardly winces. Joe Jonah Jameson, the former owner of  _ The Daily Bugle   _ (bought out by some smug asshole who turned it into a tabloid) was the news editor for  _ The Wall Street Journal.  _ He had met the guy once (actually six times, to turn in photos of Spider-Man for money. Peter stopped after the Green Goblin almost killed Jameson to find out who was taking the photos) and never liked him. 

“Good thing you didn’t,” Peter munched on popcorn, his thumb tracing around MJ’s index finger. He loves doing that, just to remind him that she’s there. “I don’t need you finding out my secret identity  _ again.”  _

“Oh again?” she laughs, just as an alien burst from the chest of Kane. “I’m still surprised that  _ nobody  _ has discovered that Peter Parker, nerd extravaganza, is the man behind the spandex suit that is Spider-Man.”

His free hand is hovering around the edges of the box that holds the ring. The ring that would bind MJ to him forever -legally speaking, she’s already made it  _ quite  _ clear she was sticking by him for a long, long time- and he can just see it now. His mission in mind and he can’t help but smile wildly as the crew of the  _ Nostromo  _ scrambles to trap the alien. 

“Ah Peter, why are you smiling? I like pain and misery as much as the next person, but this isn’t a smiling kind of thing,” MJ huffs as she takes another bite of popcorn. He struggles to come up with a good explanation.  _ Oh, I’m about to propose to you now. That’s why I’m smiling.  _ The tension is building up like the music in a Christopher Nolan film. His heartbeat increases. You would think he would be getting good at this, being next to MJ, but he’s not. 

He’s still as flustered as ever before. 

And that’s when fate laughs at him or saves him. He’ll decide later, but his phone rings, the Amazing Spider-Man theme song playing. He loves the damn ringtone, but right now, all he wants to do is throw the phone across the drive-in theater and have it smash against the pavement. He can’t because it’s made by Stark Industries, who build those things with endurance in mind. You could drop it from the Empire State Building and it would survive.

He sighs in frustration as he lets go of the box and digs into his jacket pocket. It’s, well, it’s Captain America. Fucking Captain America who didn’t get the memo  _ not  _ to bother Peter on this night. Grumbling,”Should have thrown at the shield at his face when I had the chance” he gives a puppy-dog look to MJ, who just shakes her head.

“Answer the phone, Peter.”

He follows her instructions and Captain America’s voice echoes across the empty drive-in, directly conflicting with the sound of horror coming from the cast of  _ Alien.  _

“Hey Petey, we need an extra hand downtown. This so-called Sinister Six just showed up and they’re giving me and Tony a hard time,” Captain America explains breathlessly and he can hear Mr. Stark grunt in the background as he crashes into something. Repulsors immediately go off and somebody else is crashing into a car. “I’d ask somebody else, but the other Avengers are off on another mission and there’s this new guy with a fishbowl on his head giving us a run for our money.”

_ Goddamnit.  _ He almost slams his fist into the car but checks himself. The car is fragile, much like the ring inside his pocket. “Are you sure you need another hand?”

He hears a cry of guttural pain and it’s probably Rhino, the idiot who thinks he can win a fight by just charging everyone. It’s confirmed when his ears are blasted by a proud Russian accent proclaiming,”I am the Rhino!”

“Yeah, these guys are tough. How the hell are you able to take them on?”

“Language!” Mr. Stark says in the background, repulsors firing in all directions. 

“I’m never going to live that down.”

He struggles within himself. On one hand, the Sinister Six have never banded together like this before. Usually, they were in groups of two or three; easily taken care off because they didn’t know how to work together. But they had learned their lesson, which is rare for villains -credit where credit is due- and came together to work as a team, like what those hamsters said all those years ago.

On the other hand, he’s about to propose to MJ. He’s waging an inner war between himself, weighing the sacrifices of Iron Man and Captain America over MJ possibly agreeing to marry him. He’s leaning towards their deaths or severe injuries being worth it, when, finally, it’s MJ who makes the decision for him.

“Go save your superhero parents,” MJ orders sternly. She actually likes Captain America the most, despite her own personal stance on the Sokovian Accords, so she would never forgive him if he allowed Captain America to bite the dust. She even tolerates Mr. Stark, despite her labeling him a sexist jerk and a billionaire playboy.

(She’s wrong though. Mr. Stark is married.)

Sighing with a finality, he gives her a quick peck on the cheek before sliding off the hood of the car. He goes to the trunk, unlocks it, and pulls out his own custom-made suit that he made on his own during his stay at Stark Tower a summer ago. As he fits into it, he sees MJ staring at him. Her eyes are stormy with emotion, emotions of love and longing, and he just wants to stay there and hold her in his arms.

He places the ring inside a pocket in his suit and immediately radios Stark Tower to pick him up.

 

XXX

MJ kissed him for the first time in the library. They weren’t dating, but they were close friends. She would come over every Sunday night to watch  _ Game of Thrones  _ during the summer, where they would argue over who was better, the show or the book.

(MJ was a hardcore book lover and Peter didn’t care either way about the show or the book. He just loved hearing her voice, even when it was filled with annoyance at his own opinions.)

The library was deserted, not a soul in sight except for the judging covers of classics like  _ Pride and Prejudice.  _ MJ helped out during the summer and it was near closing time when she asked Peter to get a book from below to hand over to her. 

That’s when the ladder she was standing on snapped and she started to fall. She was strangely silent as Peter caught her in his arms, her own arms coming to wrap around his neck. She’ was breathing hard, her hair a messy tumble of curly locks, and she was looking straight into his eyes. 

“Good catch Tiger,” she breathlessly congratulated and he continues to hold her. She doesn’t protest and instead peers intensely into his eyes. It’s when he blurts out the stupidest, bravest, and most awesome thing he’s ever had to say to her (besides asking her out for the first time.)

“Can I kiss you?”

His hands are starting to get sweaty and he almost puts her down when she closes the distance and answers it without a word.

XXX

 

Fighting aside Captain America and Iron Man should be awesome. And it is. Peter is watching the news camera footage of him using his webs holding a sewer man cover to deflect missiles and bullets coming from the Rhino’s mechanical battle-suit before said man cover slams into the metal armor. It had been a hard battle, the Sinister Six being complete assholes and that guy in a fishbowl, dubbed Mysterio by the press, being an extra pain in his ass. 

Good thing it’s the weekend, so he spends that time recuperating in his Queens apartment instead of grading chemistry tests. The Rhino got him good, a nice clean scratch right across his chest, courtesy of the damned horn. It turns out the Rhino got a lot better at charging people during prison, who would have thought?

Mr. Rogers and Mr. Stark congratulate him, but he waves them off. Thanks to the Sinister Six, he didn’t have the opportunity to ask MJ to marry him. He supposes it’s for good and he’s glad that the ring didn’t get crushed in the fight. 

Speaking of said intended recipient of the ring, she was curled right next to him, her arms currently entangled with his own. He breathed in the scent of her hair and sighed. What a missed opportunity. He wants to propose to her so badly, but he can’t. It’s just not the right time. 

But he remembers one of Ben’s old sayings. 

When God closes a door, he opens a window.

That window came a week later, when he’s busy grading chemistry tests for his tenth graders. They’re smart, as anybody who gets into Midtown should be, but their scores are lower than he anticipates and it stresses him out. He’s rubbing his temple with his fingers, while MJ is spread out across the bed, working on her next article about how some politician is exchanging political favors for money.

“God I can’t take it anymore,” Peter whines. “Every single test, except for one, is a low C or high D. These kids are supposed to be smart and this material isn’t that hard. Am I a bad teacher? Do I just not get across to these guys? And the funny thing is that they’re all getting different answers wrong, so it’s not a specific subject. Review is gonna be tough.”

“You’re telling me,” she said with understanding. Her fingers dance among her keyboard, typing words faster than should be humanly possible. “Why do New York City Councilmen have to be such assholes _?  _ They won’t answer my calls, respond to my emails, or grant my request for an interview. Of course these guys are shady, I just can’t prove it. Yet.”

He admires her determination, her drive to better humanity. She can’t do it like he can, where he’s swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper. She does it in her own way, which Peter thinks is just as good, if not better, than his own activities as Spider-Man. An idea springs to mind.

(No, he’s not going to propose to her in his Spider-Man suit. MJ would break up with him faster than a speeding bullet.)

“How about we get some air?” he suggests slyly. She raises an eyebrow, a trademark MJ gesture. “We can take a walk to Central Park.”

“Central Park is ten miles away Peter,” she reminds him and Peter gives a small smile. He looks down at his hands with a coy expression and MJ immediately starts to shake her head. 

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” she’s shaking her head, but he can spot the grin on her face spreading like a wildfire. “No.”

XXX

“I hate you, Peter Benjamin Parker.”

It’s such a simple statement, but it fills him with love and joy. He loves MJ with all his heart. As they land softly, he makes sure to be at least a block away from the park. Last time he tried to stop a robbery here, he tried to use his webs in the trees. 

(Suffice to say, the robber got away and he was forced to spend twenty bucks to get the guy an Uber. The  _ Wall Street Journal  _ and  _ New York Daily News  _ opinion sections had a field day with that incident.)

The sky is filled with stars and they’re visible, not something easily seen in the New York skyline. He can see the Big Dipper, shining just for her. It’s a sign, he tells himself, as he turns to see if anybody saw them land. His senses are tuned to eleven and God is on their side, for there is not a soul in sight. He lets her off, before cutting of the web. It’s gonna dissolve in two hours anyway. 

“So Central Park huh?” she asks as she hooks her arm around his and draws in closer. “One of the most filmed locations in the world, the most visited urban park of all time, and there’s not a soul in sight. Crazy.”

The lights illuminate the trees, which are changing from their green color to light brown, signaling the changings of seasons, despite it being October.  _ Late bastards.  _ They’re walking, heading north for no reason whatsoever. His mind is preoccupied, the ring in his jacket pocket, secured by webbing. 

“Yeah,” he said absent-minded, his eyes wandering to her instead. She’s taking in the sights. She’s always been amazed by Central Park and it was a favorite place of hers. She would tell him stories about how she would stay there for hours, reading in the trees while hiding from her parents. 

His hand ghosts over the ring again, just making sure it’s still there. Just like he thought, it’s still there. MJ is droning on about rent prices again. Their rent is bad, but they live in a one bedroom apartment and they have no kids, so it’s not so bad. Though Peter does imagine he will have kids one day with her.

(He had a dream once where he sang the Amazing Spider-Man theme song as a lullaby to his future daughter to get her to sleep. He’s hoping one day that dream will come true.)

MJ suddenly stops, arm detaching from his own and he misses it immediately. She looks at him strangely, her eyes narrowing.  _ What’s going on her mind?  _ Peter doesn’t know and he’s gotten a lot better at reading her expressions.

“Is something wrong?” she asks suddenly. “I just got that intuition that something’s a bit off and I want to make sure you’re alright.”

“Everything is fine,” he says to assure her, despite everything  _ not  _ being fine. He wants to go down on one knee, cliches galore, and ask her to marry him. But his body doesn’t respond to what his mind and heart wants. He’s rigid, locked, and he doesn’t have the key. So of course, his mouth starts to respond for him. “Just thinking about us.”

Now MJ looks confused, worried, and scared. He’s seen that look only a few times; when he was in the hospital for an entire month because of the whole Infinity Wars, when he took on the Green Goblin and he was almost  _ stabbed  _ in the gut by a glider, and when they went through their first major fight as a couple. 

“Okay…” she says uneasily. “What do you mean thinking about us? Like in, the status of our relationship?”

“Yeah, exactly that.”

And their minds are drawing two different conclusions. He can see that the gears are turning in her mind and she latches onto something. 

“You’re breaking up with me aren’t you?” she accuses and that’s when Peter, all his anxiety, his fear, his emotions just flood out. He straight up laughs, booming across the park and scaring birds nesting above him. MJ shoots him a glare that would kill him if it could.

“ _ Break up with you?  _ My God MJ, I want you to marry me. The last thing I wanna do is break up with you. You’re the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me, why would I ever want to end that?”

He wished that he could have said it with a little more suave and swagger, but his feelings are out there. His hand is frozen though and try as he might, he can’t get the ring out of his pocket. His body really hates him tonight.

“You want me,” she points to herself,” To marry you. As in tying the knot. Become hitched. Build a house with a white picket fence, a dog, and a little kid with brown eyes and black hair.”

“A cat?” he offers lamely. But then he notices a subtle shift in her mood and he realizes that she’s been thinking about it as well. For how long, he doesn’t know. “You know expensive raising a dog in New York City on our budget would be?”

“Way to stay on subject Parker.”

He sighs. “Yes, I want you to marry me. I’ve wanted for a while, but it’s been formulating in my mind for a couple months now. This is my second time trying to propose to you.”

“Second time?” she asks in surprise before her eyes dawn with realization. “The drive-in theater. You were going to propose there?”

“Yeah and then damn Sinister Six decided to cause trouble in Time Square,” he mumbles more to himself. The ring is still there in his pocket, burning a hole through his soul.  _ Just get down one knee Parker and ask her you fool! _

“Out of all the ways I wanted to get proposed to on the hood of my crappy car was at the bottom. Bottom five, maybe bottom three.”

“Thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

And then he laughs again, this time full of joy and love for her. He’s about to bend down on one knee, proclaim his everlasting love and ask her the most important question in his short life when she speaks up and changes his world for good.

“Hey Parker, wanna get married?”

“ _ Eh _ ?” he responds like he can’t believe what he just heard. Like she didn’t just propose to him and flip the switch.

She rolls her eyes like he’s an idiot. To be fair, he is.

“I’m asking if you want to get married. Hitched. Tie the knot. I take your last name despite the sexism behind the tradition. I thought you were supposed to be smart you dweeb. ”

His heart pounds for two reasons. One, it pounds with madness because  _ he  _ wanted to be the one to ask her, sexism be damned. He was the guy dammit, he was supposed to do this. And two; well, she wanted to marry him. All this apprehension, this tension is melting away like snow on a summer’s day.

“Sure, why not?”

(He ends up sliding the ring on her finger in the end. She didn’t have one on him, so he won that round.)

 

XXX

Peter realized the day he loved her for the first time.

They were sitting next to each other for graduation practice despite their last names being several letters apart, just waiting for the damn thing to be over. She’s going to NYU for journalism, he’s heading off to Empire State for chemistry. She’s reading through her book,  _ A Vindication for the Rights of Women,  _ but her right hand’s fingers are intertwined with his.

(He loves how lovely she is in the sunlight of spring. He could paint a picture.)

“What are you looking at loser?” she asks good-naturedly and he just sighs in response. She rolls her eyes at him before tacking on idiot and goes back to her book.

_ I love this woman. I want to be with her for the rest of my life.  _ He’s sure Captain America has a PSA on love somewhere. He’s gonna find it. But right now, listening to Mr. Harrington drone in the background, he’s content. He can see this going on forever, just him and MJ, holding hands. He might be a seventeen year old dweeb, but he can foresee into the future.

(He’s right of course. Three children and seven grandchildren later, she still calls him loser, nerd, and dweeb. He still holds her hand. He wouldn’t change a thing.)

**Author's Note:**

> Well shit, that was a long write. I just want to say this piece was heavily inspired by three stories. The first and foremost is [Imagine Me and You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2227386) by MayDayParade8123, which is a Percy Jackson AU. The second is [to you, I bequeath all our yesterdays](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11619969) by intrepidment. The third is [Look out! Here comes Spiderdad](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11620644)by doverbay.
> 
> All these inspirations can be seen, though Spiderdad is limited to a few sentences. A couple of references to other movies (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 being the most obvious) but this is the longest one-shot I've ever written. Title is taken from a Dean Martin song by the same name. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!


End file.
